Spark visits with arts organizations that have been supporting the Bay Area art community for decades and the people that keep them alive.

Founded in 1973, Ashkenaz is an East Bay music and culture venue that specializes in live roots music and international folk dancing every night of the week.

Every summer since 1967, Harriet and Jim Schlader have produced and directed classic American musical theater for the Woodminster Summer Musicals in Oakland’s Joaquin Miller Park.

Then head south to Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center, celebrating its 28th year as the West Coast’s oldest year-round jazz performance venue and education center.

Spark explores the boundaries of what is considered art. Meet Jon Brumit and Marc Horowitz as they take over New Langton Arts and reinvent themselves as the business team of Sliv & Dulet Enterprises. They collaborate with 25 other artists to “develop new products and services” within an experiential installation that comments on conventions of office life and the art world. Then join sound artist Loren Chasse as he activates the sounds of nature and architecture with youth from Julia Morgan Center for the Arts’ summer camp. Lastly, smart mobs like FlockSmart are sweeping the world — is it a passing fad or a major technological trend? Judge for yourself.

Funding for arts education in public schools continues to dwindle at a shockingly steady rate. Spark bears witness as artists and arts organizations throughout the Bay Area are forced to take matters into their own hands to ensure that children are exposed to arts in school.

Explore the halls, stages, classrooms and studios of School of the Arts (SOTA), one of the few public high schools in California where arts disciplines don’t play second fiddle to academics.

Then travel to schools all over the Bay Area with members of Young Audiences as they reach more than a quarter of a million students each year with a variety of cultural, visual, performing and literary arts.

And listen as SFJAZZ Jazz in the Middle brings outstanding jazz musicians, the Poet Laureate of San Francisco and local middle school students together to create and perform original poetry set to jazz.

To be an artist is one thing, but to lead groups of other artists is a fine art in and of itself. Spark gets an inside look into the hectic and enriching lives of extraordinary arts administrators.

Try to keep up with the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s Michael Morgan — from middle school visits and young musician tutorials to symphony and opera rehearsals.

Then, be inspired by Oberlin Dance Company’s Brenda Way, who in the three decades since she founded ODC has directed her dancers and staff to accomplish more than they ever dreamed possible.

Finally, sit in as the founder of Palo Alto’s TheatreWorks, Robert Kelley, directs a rehearsal of “Proof.”

Spark visits with three women who use their art to explore questions of history, time and memory. Driven by a need to explore family memories and the Chinese American experience, South Bay artist Flo Oy Wong has embarked on a creative path in her provocative artworks that record the human impact of violence and racism in America. From bleak hospital wards to gray government buildings, mixed-media artist Ann Chamberlain works wonders transforming intimidating public spaces into welcoming, inspirational environments to evoke personal stories and recollections of the past. After the death of her young son, sculptor Virginia Harrison has been working with others who have experienced personal loss to create unique memorial markers, plaques and urns.

Spark takes a look at the business of art. Irving M. Klein International String Competition has $10,000 up for grabs — young competitors vie for this grand prize and the opportunity of a lifetime to headline a series of prestigious concerts. Get real-life money-management lessons in the contemporary world of art dealing from Linc Art Gallery owner Charles Linder. Then join graduating young artists from the San Francisco Art Institute (sanfranciscoart.edu) as they stand on the precipice between art school and the real world.

Discover the challenges and the magic behind translating the written word into a theatrical performance. In this episode, Spark documents the creative process in three Bay Area acts. Act I: Watch Word for Word turn the printed pages of Angela Carter‘s gothic deconstruction of the infamous Lizzie Borden murders in “The Fall River Axe Murders.” Act II: Try justifying the brutality and blood in political murders as California Shakespeare Theater‘s artistic director Jonathan Moscone directs the climactic assassination scene in “Julius Caesar.” Act III: Witness the efforts of African American Shakespeare Company to update the classic story of “Beauty and the Beast” for a contemporary audience.

Artists have found inspiration in everyday life, as this episode of Spark highlights.

Grandfather of the art car, David Best transforms more than 30 vehicles into fantastical works of art, include cranking out a new masterpiece from an old Cadillac.

Next, artist and rapper Keith Knight re-channels his own life experiences into his comic strip, the “K-Chronicles,” a poignant combination of urban politics, race, love, family and offbeat humor.

Finally, the Surf Style art show at the 111 Minna Gallery opens a contemporary window into the influence of 1970s surfing subculture in retail, fashion, art, design and advertising.

Spark reveals the many creative ways Bay Area artists collaborate to share their craft. Join forces with Campo Santo and writer Denis Johnson in their series of soul-searching theatrical experiences as we document the phases of their ongoing collaboration from first reading to final performance. Next, get an inside look at collaborative duo Charlie Castaneda and Brody Reiman, known as castaneda/reiman, as they prepare a new series of conceptual sculptures for an upcoming New York gallery installation. Then meet painter Mary Lovelace O’Neal and composer Olly Wilson as they create an audio-visual chamber music experience called “Call and Response” with the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

Break new ground with Bay Area artists as this episode of Spark gives you a firsthand introduction to their thoughts and processes.

Meet conceptual artist Paul Kos, who was among the first artists to incorporate video, sound and interactivity into sculptural installations.

Then go behind the scenes, from the initial concept to the opening night, with choreographer Joe Goode and his loyal company as they develop a brand-new performance piece — synthesizing text, gestures and humor with high-velocity dancing.

Finally, break the sound barrier at Mills College Center for Contemporary Music as we drop in on their annual open house to check out the latest from students and faculty members.

Engineering ingenuity can elevate ambitious artworks to a different level. Spark gets you an inside look at the fire-breathing dragon and flying monkeys in Best of Broadway’s “Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz” as this brand-new, multimillion dollar musical production hits the Curran Theater. Then defy gravity with sculptor Richard Deutsch, who pushes the physical limits of stone and metal forms weighing several tons each. And fly to new heights with Project Bandaloop as they test out their vertical trampoline.

Spark unearths the cultural richness in the Bay Area as immigrant artists transplant their cultural traditions. Chinese classical painter Li Huayi, from the first generation of Cultural Revolution artists, reinvigorates Chinese landscape painting with his modern abstract vision. Striving to keep the pure form of danzón alive, Roberto Borrell and his band, Orquesta La Moderna Tradición, enliven the scene with passion and dedication to the performance of classic Cuban dance music. Continuing a tradition that dates back to his Moorish ancestors, Algerian artist Khalil Bendib paints ceramic tiles using methods that evoke another time and place.

Spark unveils the rhythms of life at several artists-in-residence programs, from the Marin Headlands to the San Francisco Bay.

Resident artists at the Headlands Center for the Arts explain why the program represents a rare opportunity for experimentation and interaction among the lucky few chosen to participate.

At the Creative Growth Art Center, the miracle of creative voices comes alive as artists with developmental, emotional and physical disabilities are given the tools and guidance to develop their talents.

Meanwhile, innovative and offbeat, Artship navigates the Bay Area searching for a new home.

For thousands of years, women around the world have expressed their personal histories, societal values and individual eccentricities in the art of fabric, and this tradition now informs the work of many contemporary fine artists.

Spark visits weaver and teacher Consuelo Jimenez Underwood as she constructs the history of indigenous and non-indigenous conflicts through her woven works.

Then we observe the process of painter Andrea Higgins as she finalizes her canvas series “The Presidents’ Wives,” based on the wardrobes of American first ladies — from Nancy Reagan’s signature red to Lady Bird Johnson’s diaphanous yellow chiffon.

Lastly, we join curator of textiles Diane Mott at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as she gives us a peek at Borneo textiles produced by the Iban women, whose dyeing and weaving skills were the ultimate achievement and thus the path to power in their tribes.